Walking Forward
by barefootbean
Summary: Tabatha knew. She could not stay here any longer.


_Written for a role-play. A sort of introductory post - it takes place several days after the Flanoir scenes._

* * *

Tabatha watched the sun rise over the hills beyond Altessa's House for the fifth day since Mithos' betrayal in a tangible silence.

Birds were slowly starting to wake, their quiet morning song the only sounds in the sleeping world. The breezes that blew in from east across the ocean caused the grasses to stir, the great tall pines that separated Ozette from her home to sway lightly. Soon now, the sun in the far recess of the sky would rise a little higher, stretch its colors far out across the atmosphere and soon, she would no longer have a place here, and soon, Altessa would wake, ask of her services to him as was her duty and it would be another day-another day and another afternoon on repetition.

Outside, she was bound to nothing. Nature ruled in its domain, mana flowed beneath her feet and spread out across the continents, a constant source of life and energy.

But it was not for her to use. After all, she was a doll; dolls didn't need the air or the sky to live, nor the crisp oxygen or the need for exchanged pleasantries with others. She liked them most days, even though, the feelings she hoped to feel were an imitation of anything genuine, and therefore, nothing when they weren't for her to feel on her own.

Sleep was not something she had been born with, rather, she never felt the need to lay down her head in a room and close her eyes against the activity of those who lived. She spent her time most evenings outside, where she could listen to the night sounds of the animals and monsters that roamed just beyond. They were free to do as they pleased, free from the burden that came with being a replacement for a goddess they knew nothing of nor understood.

In many ways, Tabatha found them to be similar, but unrelatable at best. They were monsters, and she a doll-both unnecessary beings with little purpose of their own, but both something more when brought into question.

She thought, or tried to anyway for one that couldn't possibly have thoughts of their own accord, that if there was anything she could have wanted, it would be the ability to perceive. To_ feel_ what is was like to have emotions; to feel happiness or sadness when the people around her suffered. Altessa-he was injured, suffering from the pain of a past he didn't like to speak to her of and an older, deeper, lingering wound for the girl Presea, and while she tended to his injuries to the best of her extent while nursing her own piteous ones, she imitated the facade of one who would hold concern, the facade that she had been programmed with upon creation by _his_ dwarven hands.

Outside, she was bound to nothing. There was nothing to tell her of what to do or how to react to the wind blowing in her hair, to the screech of an owl as it swooped low through the trees. For Tabatha, this was the only freedom she could find, the only outlet that granted her a momentary sense of worth, or something beyond what was in her capabilities to understand.

When she left this, this understanding [as she knew it] behind, she wouldn't have a need to find a purpose, a job to perform or a duty, for she was instilled with the one she had always had, the one that drew her out night after night to listen to the things she could and play them over in her mind, the purpose that bound her to the spirit of the Great Tree of Mana.

Tabatha knew not of the draw, or the compulsion that had a firm hold on her whenever she moved, only that it was a constant, and in her current state, she was missing a part of her that otherwise gave her life.

Martel, the spirit was called. The person she was supposed to be was absent from her mind. And until the day that Tabatha found her again, until Mithos' presence didn't cause her harm like he had, until Martel was free as well, than Tabatha would forever be lifeless, forever a puppet.

But there was a quiet stirring within, a mismatched thing that she knew nothing of. It simply was, and whatever it was was pulling her away from where she was meant to be. Altessa would wake any minute - the sun was climbing higher now - and his injuries would need tending to.

Without a word or a feeling to signal her departure, Tabatha stood from her seat on the chair she had brought outside with her, and taking it under an arm with little effort, she pushed open the door with her arm and quietly let herself in.

From the dining room, she could hear Altessa's breathing, no longer as rushed as it had been only days before. The doctor from Flanoir had saved his life, something she could not to do at the time of her injuries that had racked her body with a shock to her system. It had taken her a full day to recuperate, and now that she had, Tabatha knew there was no longer any place for her here. She had known it, and yet...

She simply didn't belong in this house. These memories that she held-they did nothing for her. What she longed to find, what sought her out was beyond the false sense of peace that blanketed these woods, across the ocean and deep within a forest she had once called home. Or at least, the home that had once housed the goddess was calling out for her, too, and now-now it was her home as well.

Altessa would be fine. He had survived Mithos and the trials of his life that had inevitably taken from him all that he had ever held close, and now, if she didn't leave now while he still slept away the bitterness, Tabatha knew he would never recover.

What he needed was a world not torn by the ambitions of men, and perhaps, beyond this reality that she had been limited to, she would find the solution.

So when the sun finally rose high enough that she would not have to concern herself with protection against the creatures of the forest, Tabatha packed lightly, left a note in detail of her absence should Altessa wake to wonder, and, facing the lull that swept her away, left in seek of the answers only the spirit of years past could give her.


End file.
